Christ Church

Lord of Life, Dealer of Death, Giver of Gifts (Pentecost 2020)

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Introduction

Today we celebrate Pentecost, the ancient harvest festival of the Jews, the great day on which the Holy Spirit was poured out upon the church, and three thousand souls were harvested into new life. This giving of the Spirit was a great event in the history of the church, but the gift of the Spirit also has great significance for each individual believer. Today we are going to consider three important activities of the Holy Spirit in the life of every believer here.

The Text

“And I say unto you, Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you. For every one that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened. If a son shall ask bread of any of you that is a father, will he give him a stone? or if he ask a fish, will he for a fish give him a serpent? Or if he shall ask an egg, will he offer him a scorpion? If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children: how much more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask him?” (Luke 11:9–13).

Summary of the Text

We too often interpret these words of Jesus as though He were speaking about answered prayer with regard to material things. Now Jesus does teach elsewhere that we are to trust God for material things—like our daily bread (Matt. 6:11), and what you will wear (Matt. 6:30)—but that is not what is happening here. Jesus is not here saying that if you need a new car, then ask, and you will receive it. You should still ask for the car if you need it, but you need to find a different verse.

In His teaching here, the Lord is very specific about what we should ask for, what we should seek, and where we should knock. First comes the promise. Ask and you will receive. Seek and you will find. Knock and the door will open (v. 9). And then He goes on to reiterate the certainty of this. Everyone who asks, receives. Everyone who seeks, finds. Everyone who knocks, stands before an open door (v. 10). The Lord then sets up a comparison between God’s goodness and ours. If a man’s son asks for bread, will his father give him a rock? If he asks for a fish, will his father give him a snake? If he asks for an egg, will he receive a scorpion? (vv. 11-12). These are rhetorical questions, and the answer to all three is obviously no. So then, if evil human beings know how to not betray their children, how will it be with God? Obviously, our heavenly Father will give us the good gift.

What is that good gift? What will everyone receive if they ask for it? The Holy Spirit. What will everyone find if they seek for it? The Holy Spirit. Who will open the door for everyone if we knock there? The Holy Spirit.

“How much more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask him?” (Luke 11:13b).

The Infinite God

The Holy Spirit is the third Person of the Holy Trinity, and not to be regarded as some kind of impersonal force. We are sometimes tempted to think this because He works in such a way as to not draw attention to Himself. His task is to glorify the Lord Jesus Christ (John 16:13-14), and the Lord Jesus is the one who brings us to the Father (John 14:6). And so Christian prayer is to the Father, in the name of the Son, in the power of the Holy Spirit (Eph. 2:18). To remind you of an illustration we have used before, the triune God encompasses the entire journey. The Father is the city we are going to. The Son is the road we travel on. The Spirit is the car we drive.

But never interpret His behind-the-scenes work as that of an impersonal force, like electricity. When Peter rebukes Ananias and Sapphira, he says to Ananias that he has lied to the Holy Spirit (Acts 5:3). And in the next verse he says that it was a lie told to God (Acts 5:4).

And the work of the Holy Spirit in your life includes, but is not limited to, the following three realities.

Lord of Life

The Spirit is the one who gives the new birth. He is the one who quickens you, and brings you to life. He is the one who regenerates you.

“For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death” (Rom. 8:2).

You were previously dead in your trespasses and sins, and the reason the principle of new life suddenly appeared in you is because of the Holy Spirit. He is the Lord and Giver of life.

Dealer of Death

But God does not save us, and then rocket us up to Heaven that instant. He wants us to learn some things about ourselves first, and He wants us to do this in a difficult environment. Because of the Spirit’s presence and the new life He brings, we no longer have to deal with reigning sin. Reigning sin, the old man, the unconverted you, is forever dead. But the transformation is not entirely complete. We still have to deal with remaining sin, and the Holy Spirit in you is an effective killer.

“For if ye live after the flesh, ye shall die: but if ye through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live” (Rom. 8:13).

Giver of Gifts

One Spirit knits us into one body (Eph. 4:4), and that Spirit joins all of us together in love. In thatcontext, He gives particular gifts to His saints (Eph. 4:11; 1 Cor. 12:7-11; Rom. 12:6-8). Those gifts cover a wide array of abilities—helps, administration, mercy, faith, teaching, and so forth.

“For as we have many members in one body, and all members have not the same office:” (Rom. 12:4).

So as you rejoice in the new heart you have been given, and as you hunt down remaining nodes of self-centeredness in order to pull them up by the roots, don’t forget to look down at your hands. What has God placed there that you might be privileged to give to your brothers and sisters in this community?

The only gift we can ever give one another is the gift of Christ. But we must also remember that Christ, and the love of Christ, comes in many different shapes.

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Koinonia and the Way of Christ

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Introduction

The lock down orders that have been imposed all over the country have revealed to us a number of things—outside the church, in the relationship of the church to our broader society, and within the church. The thrust of this message has to do with the latter. What have we learned, if anything, about true Christian fellowship, true Christian koinonia, true Christian community?

The Text

“Then they that gladly received his word were baptized: and the same day there were added unto them about three thousand souls. And they continued stedfastly in the apostles’ doctrine and fellowship, and in breaking of bread, and in prayers” (Acts 2:41–42).

Summary of the Text

In the second chapter of Acts, the Holy Spirit is poured out on the disciples of Jesus (Acts 2:2-4), and the first great gospel sermon was preached to the people of Jerusalem (Acts 2:14ff). Thousands began to flood into the church, and Luke describes for us how the church began to assume its ordained shape, and our text describes four features of their community.

Those who received the word were baptized, which ushered them into the body of Christ. About three thousand came in that first day (Acts 2:41). And what did these three thousand people do? Luke tells us that they did four things, continuing in them steadfastly. The first was that they submitted to the apostolic teaching. The second was that they continued in fellowship with one another (koinonia). The third was the Lord’s Supper, the breaking of bread together. And the last was prayers (Acts 2:42).

Two Questions

Back in the seventies, the great question was what is truth? Today the pressing question is where is community? Some might make this kind of observation in order to set the questions against one another, but rightly understood they are complementary questions. Truth is foundational to any true community, and community is the only appropriate response to the truth. “If we say that we have fellowship with him, and walk in darkness, we lie, and do not the truth” (1 John 1:6). Fellowship exults in the truth, and truth generates fellowship. In our text, it was dedication to the apostles teaching (truth) that resulted in fellowship (koinonia).

Koinonia

And so here is how the fact that the biblical word for fellowship is koinonia, connects to true discipleship. Think of how Jesus was welcomed into Jerusalem in the Triumphal Entry. In order to welcome Christ into Jerusalem you have to go down to the street He is on. When you do so, you are not just praising Him as He travels by you. You also have a necessary relationship to those people on your right and left who are also praising Him. Christ was welcomed to the week of His passion by a crowd, and not by the last true believer. Save us, they cried, and that is what He did.

But the crowd had to come to Christ. They could not have gone two blocks over, turned and faced each other, and establish a little koinonia by themselves. It never works. The point of integration must be the incarnate truth. But at the same time, life that doesn’t congregate around the truth is not really alive.

In modern church parlance, fellowship means coffee and donuts. But in the biblical world, fellowship meant mutual partaking and indwelling. Fellowship is what we have in the body together, as we are being knit together in love.

One Another

A body is what we are. We do not act in a particular way in order to become a body, we are to act that way because we are a body and we desire to be a well-functioning one. “So we, being many, are one body in Christ, and every one members one of another” (Rom. 12:5).

Receive

When it comes to life in the body, there are all kinds of offenses. There are business offenses. There are family offenses. There is petty rudeness in the parking lot, and there is glaring sin within a marriage. What in the world are we to do with other people? “Wherefore receive ye one another, as Christ also received us to the glory of God” (Rom. 15:7).

It glorified God when Christ received us, and it glorifies Him when we receive one another. When we receive a brother or sister, we are not promising to “look the other way.” That is not biblical receiving. We are promising to let love cover it, when that is appropriate, and to confront it, when that is appropriate. We are promising to not complain about it to others. We either cover it or confront it, and this principled communion is why it is possible to excommunicate in love.

Love

Of course the center of this is love. When we look at the “one anothers” of Scripture, this has a central place. “A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another” (John 13:34). “By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another” (John 13:35). “This is my commandment, That ye love one another, as I have loved you” (John 15:12). “These things I command you, that ye love one another” (John 15:17). “Owe no man any thing, but to love one another: for he that loveth another hath fulfilled the law” (Rom. 13:8).

We can only love because we have been loved. And we can only know that we have been loved if we grasp—through a living faith—the glories of the gospel. Christ died and was buried, Christ was buried and rose, and He did it so that you might be put right with God. You are ushered into the fellowship of love that He offers, and this is what makes it possible for you to love your neighbor.

Strive

But it is very tempting for us to conceive of love as a generic disposition to “be nice.” But love rolls up its sleeves, and gets into the dirty work. If all we had to do was sit around and radiate love rays at one another, I am sure we would all be up to the task. But what about all those provocations that come from . . . you know, other people?

We begin by making sure that we do not rise to the provocations. We need to have peace with one another. One of the characteristics of the band that traveled with Jesus is that He had to caution them to preserve the peace with each other. “Salt is good: but if the salt have lost his saltness, wherewith will ye season it? Have salt in yourselves, and have peace one with another” (Mark 9:50).

We should labor to think alike. We noted earlier that truth is the foundation of community, and the more we share in the truth, and walk in it, the greater will be our unity. “Now the God of patience and consolation grant you to be likeminded one toward another according to Christ Jesus” (Rom. 15:5). Our modern temptation is that of simply “agreeing to disagree,” which is fine as a temporary measure—but it is not the ultimate goal that Scripture sets out for us.

But the “one anothers” we pursue should not be limited to staying out of fights. “Be kindly affectioned one to another with brotherly love; in honour preferring one another” (Rom. 12:10). Scripture tells us to point the honor away from ourselves, and toward the other.

Conclusion

As the people of God, we are being gathered. But we cannot be gathered without being gathered together. And once we are gathered together, we face the glorious calling of life together. But in order to maintain this, we have to keep emphasizing the basics—gospel, love, forgiveness, truth. And the fact is that in the time of the coronavirus scare, these truths about koinonia must be prioritized by us, and not placed on the back burner. One of the things that has happened over the last couple of months is that we have started to accept some unbiblical definitions of words like essential. The only way to say that our gathering, our worship, our singing, is unessential is by saying that the church is unessential.

We cannot invite Christ to accompany us without inviting His bride to accompany Him.

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The Unshakeable God

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Introduction

Unless God humbles him, man won’t be humbled. Mankind has a hyperextended elbow from patting himself on the back. We look upon all the undeserved blessings which God has bestowed—our health, our financial stability, our routine, our safety, our full cupboards––and assume He owed them to us. Scripture is full of illustrative warnings against assuming the blessing of God as automatic (cf. Jdg. 7:2). If it is something God owes us then it is no longer grace. But if it is a gift, then the only thing to do is to humbly receive it all as grace upon grace.

The Text

“For ye are not come unto the mount that might be touched, and that burned with fire, nor unto blackness, and darkness, and tempest, And the sound of a trumpet, and the voice of words; which voice they that heard intreated that the word should not be spoken to them any more: (For they could not endure that which was commanded, And if so much as a beast touch the mountain, it shall be stoned, or thrust through with a dart: And so terrible was the sight, that Moses said, I exceedingly fear and quake:) But ye are come unto mount Sion, and unto the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to an innumerable company of angels, To the general assembly and church of the firstborn, which are written in heaven, and to God the Judge of all, and to the spirits of just men made perfect, And to Jesus the mediator of the new covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling, that speaketh better things than that of Abel. See that ye refuse not him that speaketh. For if they escaped not who refused him that spake on earth, much more shall not we escape, if we turn away from him that speaketh from heaven: Whose voice then shook the earth: but now he hath promised, saying, Yet once more I shake not the earth only, but also heaven. And this word, Yet once more, signifieth the removing of those things that are shaken, as of things that are made, that those things which cannot be shaken may remain. Wherefore we receiving a kingdom which cannot be moved, let us have grace, whereby we may serve God acceptably with reverence and godly fear: For our God is a consuming fire” (Heb. 12:18-29).

Summary of the Text

The entire book of Hebrews is directed to Jewish Christians facing dark clouds of impending persecution. In their fear, they began casting longing looks back at the way things were under the old Mosaic order. Throughout the book they are admonished to look through the Mosaic order and see the superiority of Jesus. As the book comes in for a landing, these early Christians are told how they ought to behave in the midst of sovereign chastisement (12:6-11).  They were to look diligently so as not fail of the grace of God (12:15).

Remembering OT history is to aid us in clinging to this grace. We’re told to remember where we have come: not to Sinai (12:18-19); with all its thunderous glory and holy fear (12:20-21).

Rather, these early Christians are told they’ve come to Zion. They’ve come to a city populated by angels, the church, and the righteous Judge (12:22-23). They have come to Jesus and to His blood (12:24). While Abel’s blood cried out for vengeance, the better word of Jesus’ blood cries out that “It is finished.”

Because of this, they need to prick up their ears and hear and heed. God spoke the Law to Israel at Sinai, upon the earth. But now God speaks from heaven, in the person of the ascended Christ.

When God spoke at Sinai, Israel was simultaneously worshipping the Golden Calf, and theydidn’t escape God’s wrath. So if you fail to come to Jesus by heeding His Gospel voice you will not escape (12:25). God’s voice shook the earth at Sinai, but Haggai had prophesied of another shaking yet to come (Hag. 2:6). This shaking was upon them. The Mosaic order was to be removed by this shaking, so that the unshakeable things might remain (12:26-27).

These children of Abraham were receiving the immovable kingdom promised to Abraham (Heb. 11:10). So, they were to have grace so that they might bring acceptable service to God. This service was to be marked by reverence and godly fear (12:28), and they were to do so because of Who God is: a consuming fire (12:29).

God Likes to Shake Things Up

Think of a chalk-artist drawing on a sidewalk in some big city. While he’s drawing the chalk dust obscures the art. But when he finally blows away the excess, what emerges is the masterpiece.

Moses’ law was like scaffolding which was soon to be shaken off to reveal the immovable city of the Unshakeable God. God’s voice shook Sinai when the Law was given. But He was about to thunder once more from heaven.

We ought not to think of the current shake-up of the world as “on par” with the shaking which is referred to in this text. However, we should think of our shaking as the aftershocks of that shaking. What happened when Jesus shed His blood, died, rose again, and ascended to the throne of majesty (Heb. 1:3)? In short, God shook the whole world. The result was that rebel principalities and powers were overthrown, and their jurisdiction was now handed over to Son of Man.

Fear, Folly, or Faith

The early Jewish Christians were faced with very uncertain times. They stood between the  beast of the Roman Empire, and the seduction of the Judaizers. Worldly fear leads to folly. And folly has many faces. One temptation was to return to the familiar structure of Moses’ law. It would have let them “belong” again. On the other hand, they could simply renounce it all and blend in with the pagans.

We see this fear leading to folly playing out in real time. Over-reactors and under-reactors. Nail-biters and conspiracy theorists. Hoarders and protesters. There is folly in cowardly panic. There is folly in thinking you’re invisible. COVID-19 may very well be the means of your death. It might also be the means of peeling open your heart to show you a festering fear of earthly things.

But what it is not is a meaningless blip. It is a warning that God has shaken the world from heaven. You don’t get to ignore the rumblings. When God shakes the world, unbelieving men run to folly, because they won’t receive the gracious humbling from the hand of the Lord.

But for Abraham’s children, we feel the aftershocks of Christ’s kingdom being established throughout the world, and we fear not the face of man, or war, or plague, or economic disaster. God is our good King, and we serve Him.

Like Paton in the Tree

John G. Paton, a Scottish missionary to the cannibals of the South Pacific, once had to spend a whole night in a tree while hiding from the savages who were hunting for him. He said of that night, “If it be to glorify my God, I will not grudge to spend many nights alone in such a tree, to feel again my Savior’s spiritual presence, to enjoy His consoling fellowship.” In another close encounter with death he said: “With my trembling hand clasped in the hand once nailed on Calvary, and now swaying the scepter of the universe, calmness and peace abode in my soul.”

That is what genuine faith in the midst of trial is able to declare. Faith stays its mind on the Lord, and therefore is kept in perfect peace. Faith knows that when all around my soul gives way, Jesus is all your hope and stay. Faith comes to the City of Zion, and knows that no matter how topsy-turvy the world may be, the King of the World is unshakeable. God calls through such trials for proud man to repent. He humbles you in order to lift you up. He shakes away the impermanent things, so that you might cling to the only permanence to be found: King Jesus.

God is shaking this whole world up so that you would look to Christ. So that your hope in all earthly deliverance would fail, and that you might turn in humble faith to trust in Him Whose Kingdom cannot be shaken. He has humbled us to the dust, so that in the midst of the dust of this great shaking we might look to an unshakeable Christ, who lifts us up with Him into His glory.

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God and Government

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Introduction

Consistent Christian are not anarchists or scofflaws. We are gathered together today in this particular way precisely because we are not scofflaws. Every Christian who reads his Bible knows and understands that we are supposed to submit to the authorities that God has placed over us. What every Christian does not know, however, is that there are various understandings of how we are to do this. So yes, this is what we are to do. But how are we to do it? Are there different approaches to this assigned task?

The Text

“Submit yourselves to every ordinance of man for the Lord’s sake: whether it be to the king, as supreme; Or unto governors, as unto them that are sent by him for the punishment of evildoers, and for the praise of them that do well. For so is the will of God, that with well doing ye may put to silence the ignorance of foolish men: As free, and not using your liberty for a cloke of maliciousness, but as the servants of God. Honour all men. Love the brotherhood. Fear God. Honour the king” (1 Peter 2:13–17).

Summary of the Text

In this passage from 1 Peter, we are told that we do whatever it is we do for the Lord’s sake. We obey magistrates in the Lord’s name, and we are not to obey them in their name (v. 13). In Romans 13, a similar passage, we are told a number of times that the authorities are God’s servants (deacons). This starts with the king, who is supreme. It then moves down to governors, and Peter again says the same thing that Paul does in Romans 13. The magistrate is to punish evildoers, and is to praise those who do well (v. 14). This is God’s will for us, so that we might through our lives silence the slander of ignorant men (v. 15), presumably those who accuse us of being lawbreakers. We are slavers or servants of God, which is what makes us free (v. 16). We are not to use the liberty we have as present possession as a cloak for malice or wrongdoing. And so we are to honor all men, love the brotherhood, fear God, and honor the king (v. 17).

The problem is that these kinds of passages are often cherry-picked in way to make them say that our submission to the civil magistrate is to be absolute. God put them there, so shut your mouth. The problem with this is that you have been taught a basic interpretive principle. Interpret any particular passage of Scripture in the light of all Scripture. And so I would remind you that the man who wrote these words for us was soon to be executed by the magistrate as someone who was a grave threat to their civil order (John 21:18-19). This was the same man who was broken out of jail by an angel, and who disappeared from the book of Acts as a wanted man (Acts 12:10, 17). The guards who lost him were executed because of his disappearance (Acts 12:19). This was the man who was in jail in the first place because he was a leader of the Christians (Acts 12:3), and who earlier had told the Sanhedrin that he wouldn’t quit preaching (Acts 5:29). And he was the man who was writing this letter to prepare law-abiding Christians for the time of persecution that was coming, in which time they would be accused of being scofflaws (1 Pet. 4:7, 13-16). So whatever his words in chapter 2 mean, they have to be consistent with the life of the one who wrote them.

Three Governments

Among the governments that exist among men, three of them were created directly by God. And none of them can function smoothly without the foundational government of self-government, or self-control. Men who cannot control themselves are incapable of living within the context of free institutions. These three governments are family government, created by God in the Garden (Gen. 2:22; Matt. 19:6), civil government, also established by God (Rom. 13:1-5), and the government of the church, which was a gift to us from Christ (Eph. 4:10-12).

Other governments that exist are creations of men—political parties, service organizations, chess clubs, and so on. The three above were all three created by God directly, and He wrote the by-laws for all of them.

Now Arrange Them All in the Right Order

If you have been a Christian for more than ten minutes, you know that there are different doctrinal positions on all kinds of stuff. On eschatology, there is premill, postmill, and amill. On baptism, there is paedo and credo. On polity, there is independent, presbyterian, and episcopal. On soteriology, there is Calvinist and Arminian. We know the different positions, and usually we have a rough idea of what kind of church we belong to.

Now here is the surprise for some. Christians disagree about the right relationship of the church to the state. Some believe that the church is and ought to be the supreme government on earth (this is the Roman Catholic position), in authority over the civil magistrates. The second position is called Erastianism (after Thomas Erastus, a 16th century Swiss physician and theologian). This position holds that the state is supreme over the church. The default position of many Christians today is Erastian. The third position, which is a classic Reformed position, is that these various government are in a “checks and balances” position, on a horizontal plane, not stacked in a vertical hierarchy. And this is the view that Christ Church holds.

On Paper

Having all of this sketched out on paper can help resolve any number of intellectual tensions. But you still have practical problems to solve. It might help you to know that a mugger with a gun taking your wallet doesn’t “get to” do that, but at the same time, it should be recognized that he is doing that. So the first level is to understand that we are talking about how things ought to be. We are talking about the ideal. In the meantime, on the way from here to there, you will at times have to do a cost/benefit analysis—just like with the mugger.

But in the meantime, whether you are under constraint or not, whether you are having to deal with restrictions or not, remember than you are free in Christ. Remember this line from our text: “As free, and not using your liberty for a cloke of maliciousness, but as the servants of God.”

The Father is good to us, all the time. Christ is Christ for us, all the time. The Spirit is with us, all the time.

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A Message for the Mayor and City Council of Moscow

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The Text

“Then Jesus said to those Jews which believed on him, if ye continue in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed; and ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free” (Jn. 8:31-32).

Introduction

There is a long tradition in the Christian Church in which ministers of the gospel delivered sermons that were directed to kings and governors and judges. Moses preached to Pharaoh. Jeremiah was called by God to preach to nations and kingdoms. Paul preached to a number of Roman Governors. John Calvin dedicated his Institutes of the Christian Religion to the King France. And you can read whole collections of sermons from early American preachers full of messages to the governors of the colonies.

So, Mayor Lambert, Counsellors Bettge, Kelly, Laflin, Sullivan, Taruscio, and Zabala, this message is respectfully for you. The Bible is clear that Christians owe magistrates honor and obedience in the Lord. And the Bible is equally clear that we are to pray for all who are in authority, and this is with the goal that we may lead quiet and peaceable lives in all godliness and honesty. I have had the pleasure of meeting only three of you, but I want you to know that you have all been in my prayers, especially recently.

An Ocean of Opinions & Feelings

My message for you today is fairly simple, but it has enormous ramifications. It’s sort of like gravity – once understood and formulated, you realize it affects everything. And the message is based on a question that I believe has been pressed upon you all in recent days. It’s a question many rulers and officials have asked over the centuries, especially in moments of uncertainty and crisis. In fact, it’s inscribed in the Bible, in the mouth of the Roman Governor Pontius Pilate when Jesus was on trial before him and a mob had gathered. The question is, “What is truth?” I imagine you all have been asking yourselves and one another that same question in the midst of this coronavirus crisis. We all have. What is truth? Are the data models being circulated true? How bad is the virus? How quickly does the virus spread? Are the numbers we are seeing true? Can it be treated? Can it overload our hospitals? What is truth?

I can only imagine what you have been through over the last number of weeks. I can only imagine that you have received more input from your constituents than ever before. No doubt, you have received advice, counsel, pleas, denunciations, theories, angry outbursts, maybe even worse. And my message for you is that the only way forward, the only way out of this mess is the truth. Jesus said, “if ye continue in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed; and ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free” (Jn. 8:32).

But in order for truth to set you free, you must know what truth is. And unless the answer to that question is something firm and fixed, something that does not change, something that goes all the way down and reaches all the way up through all of reality, you will always be adrift in a story sea of opinions and preferences and emotions.

Bedrock Truth

For the last fifty years or so, our culture and universities have declared that truth is whatever you want it to be. Whatever is true for you, is true for you, and whatever is true for me is true for me. We call this relativism or subjectivism. Everyone is their own sun, and their truth, their story, their reality is whatever they choose to make revolve around themselves.

But what you are finding is that this theory simply doesn’t work in the real world. No doubt you have been bombarded with many truth claims in recent days. Many citizens have no doubt been sharing their realities with you – with varying degrees of correspondence. But what you are no doubt finding is that these various claims to truth are competing and in many cases in direct contradiction. The pressure is on you, and the fact of the matter is that you cannot make everyone happy. Right now you have many business owners and freedom loving citizens upset, and when the isolation orders are lifted you will no doubt have many who are upset because the threat is still in their opinion very grave. But the fact of the matter is that the coronavirus cannot be both likely to kill hundreds of thousands of Americans and likely to only kill tens of thousands of Americans. The coronavirus cannot be likely to overrun hospitals and not likely to overrun hospitals. One of those is true and one is false. Or some other fact is true and both are false. You have been and are being forced to take sides, to choose which claims you find more plausible, more likely to be true. And this is because truth is by its very nature fixed, firm, immoveable.

Truth does not vary from day to day. Truth does not change. It is the same on Monday and Wednesday and Friday. It is the same this year and next year. Our understanding of truth can certainly change. We change. But truth does not change. Two plus two is four all of the time.

But in order for truth to be true there must be a bedrock that it rests on. That bedrock is what we call reality. This is why we say that someone who denies basic arithmetic or gravity is in the process of denying reality. And this is why we say that reality doesn’t care about our feelings. Reality doesn’t care what we believe. You can believe you can fly with all your might, but flapping your arms wildly and jumping off the roof of your house cannot change reality. Gravity doesn’t care.

But you cannot insist on these bedrock facts without also insisting on their origin. Where do bedrock facts come from? Where does truth come from? One of the root causes of our relativism – claiming that truth is whatever you want it to be is the theory of evolution. You cannot hold that absolutely everything in the universe accidentally came from nothing, and then by millions of years accidentally mutated and adapted into being andhold simultaneously that truth is fixed and changeless. You cannot hold that everything has changed and then arbitrarily decide that something cannot change.

If evolution is true then “might makes right” and “survival of the fittest” really is the only law. To say we evolved into caring about the weak or caring about truth doesn’t matter. Who cares? Maybe one of the more enlightened protoplasm once thought that they were the height of evolution too. But if evolution is the law, evolution doesn’t care. Mutation doesn’t ask for permission. Mutation doesn’t care about love or justice or mercy. It really is random and arbitrary, mindless and heartless.

Is There a Law-Giver?

So this is my message for you. And it is in the form of a question: What is truth?

And there really are only two options. Either there is no such thing as truth. Everything evolved, and therefore everything is an accident and meaningless mutation. Or else there is such a thing as truth because this world was created. It was designed. And therefore, it has meaning because it was meant. There are laws of nature because nature has a law-Giver.

And this is not something that is a particularly religious opinion. This fact, this truth was permanently etched on the history of our nation in the Declaration of Independence, which states that sometimes it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve political bands and to assume a separate and equal station, which the “laws of Nature and of Nature’s God” entitle them to. The Declaration of Independence acknowledges that Nature has laws and that Nature has a God. That was part of the basis for America deciding to declare independence from Great Britain. The same document closes by stating, “And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the Protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor.”

And so the question that ought to occur to us occasionally is: What were the founders of our nation actually relying on? When they risked their lives in declaring independence from Great Britain, were they actually relying on a real and true thing, the “Protection of Divine Providence,” or would it have been just as true for them to say they were relying on cotton candy, pink balloons, or the Easter Bunny? Is what they wrote true? And if you say it was true for them, then you might as well say it wasn’t true at all. It doesn’t matter if they had warm fuzzies in their belly when they wrote it, if it isn’t really true. It doesn’t matter if they felt deeply about it, if it isn’t really true. Remember the one who believes very deeply that he can fly by waving his arms wildly while jumping of his roof. Reality doesn’t care about our feelings. It only cares about what is real, what is true. So again, I ask you, what is truth?

The Truth-Teller Meddles

Logic and sound reason say that truth, for it to be true, must actually correspond to reality and must be as firm and unchanging as reality, and therefore, reality must have an intelligent and intentional origin. If there are laws of nature that are true, then nature must have a law-Giver. Or, if there is truth that is firm and fixed, then there must be an ultimate Truth-Teller.

And so we come to point: the only way through the fog of human opinion, the only way through the storm of prejudice and preference and paralyzing fear is with the truth. If everything is just flux and mutation and change, then everything is just emotion, opinion, and it doesn’t matter. But if truth – true truth really does correspond to reality, then truth really does out. Truth really does matter. There may be a storm, there may be uncertainty, but it really does pay to be as close to the truth as possible. The truth really does set you free.

But this really is the terrifying thing about truth. Truth is not arbitrary or selective, and truth cannot be cordoned off in a special room for special circumstances. If you decide to embrace Truth, not just true-for you, scratch-and-sniff truth, but true truth, you should be prepared for the fallout. And it really is a wonderful fallout, but it’s also quite bracing. It’s the only safe place to be, but it will not stop with Covid-19 or the laws of nature. And what I mean is that if you embrace Truth, you must be willing to tell the truth everywhere, and in everything. And this really is the central offense of truth. It’s why people, for all their lip service to truth, really don’t prefer it at all. Everyone is fine with truth-telling so long as is it doesn’t get personal, so long as the Truth doesn’t get to meddling. But the Truth does get to meddling.

How can you say you believe in truth when it comes to gravity or mathematics or logic, but when it comes to whether you have always told the truth, you won’t have it? But there it is anyway. Have you always told the truth? To your parents, to your employers, to your spouse, to your children? Will you embrace the Truth or not? Or how can you say that you want to know the truth about Covid-19, but you do not want to know the truth about whether an unborn baby is really a human being? How can you say that you want to know the truth, but you are not really interested in knowing anything about the Maker of the Universe, the Creator God?

The Jesus who said that truth sets us free, is the same One who said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father except by me.” It really is an extraordinary claim, an exclusive claim. Many people say that they think Jesus was a good, moral teacher, but very few of them wrestle with this claim – that He is the truth, and that He is the Way, the only Way to God. That same Jesus was crucified on a Roman cross for all our lies. He was betrayed for all of our betrayals. And He rose from the dead in order to make all things new.

Conclusion

George Washington once said “It is the duty of nations and as well as of men to own their dependence upon the overruling power of God … and to recognize the sublime truth, announced in the Holy Scriptures and proven by all history: that those nations only are blessed whose God is the Lord.” George Washington said nations are only blessed that acknowledge God.

The preamble to the Idaho State Constitution says, “We, the people of the State of Idaho, grateful to Almighty God for our freedom, to secure its blessings and promote our common welfare do establish this Constitution.”

If this is true of nations and states it is no doubt true of cities – cities like our wonderful Moscow, Idaho. But that is the question. Is it true? Is it really true? Do we need God’s blessing on the city of Moscow in order for Moscow to thrive? Do we need His help in this time of crisis? And if so, have we asked Him? Have you formally, publicly acknowledged this truth?

You have our prayers.

In the Name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, Amen.

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